A tempest is brewing over Jason Cherniak's exposure of Robert McLelland's anti-semitic comments on My Blahg.
I can understand why Cherniak (not to mention Kate of Small Dead Animals, Kathy Shaidle and Steve Janke) are upset with him.
McLelland says pretty slimey things.
What bothers me about this affair is the way Cherniak is clearly using this to advance himself and his agenda politically.
It's the Liberal Way. Liberals figure out the rules of the game and then with that knowledge turn a situation to their political advantage, usually hoping to have a veneer of moral rectitude to make it look all since and legtamite.
He would protest that he's only doing the right thing.
But the optics tell a different story.
He's trying to divide the Blogging Dippers. He's trying to make himself look good (and by extension improve the Liberal Party Brand).
I wouldn't doubt Cherniak's sincerity, except that he has a history of dumping on the NDP like that-- witness the Cheri DiNovo affair, where he smeared the candidate in the Parkdale-High Park by-election last year by taking a passage out of a book she wrote and extrapolating that she supports pedophilia.
The Liberal Party culture is about winning. There is an utter lack of the virtue of simplicity in that organization, particularly at the highest echelons. There is always an ulterior motive to every action, every word. The people are groomed, every action is vetted according for its strategic value, every word is weighed for its political impact.
Like many things, there's nothing wrong when indulged in moderation. In everyday life, we need to be prudent about our behaviour for the sake of social harmony and personal advancement. But when a person comes to be known for speaking an acting with an ulterior motive any time he would profit from the situation, his sincerity comes into question. We never get to know the real person, and our suspicions are raised whenever he says or does something that can bring him any benefit.
In effect, that person becomes soulless; a person who never acts on his true feelings.
I don't want to say that all individual Liberals are like that, but I've known ambitious Liberals to behave that way.
Just to underscore my point, take a look at what Cherniak had to say about his expose:
This morning, I decided that I had to say something. I was not the only one. I was thinking not as a Liberal, but as a Jew. If I were being partisan, I would have used internal Liberal channels and had a Liberal MP call on Layton to disclaim McClelland. This would have been a public example of the Liberal Party defending the Jewish community and it would have outed McClelland. However, that was not my goal. My goal - as stated in the title "Blogging Dippers should revolt" - was to actually get rid of McClelland as head of the Blogging Dippers.
Even his apparent sincerity is very useful for this post. You wonder if he's not using what is known as mental reservation-- saying things that are literally true, but without divulging all the facts and context (that's not unheard of among lawyers). It may very well be he was thinking as a Jew. It may very well be that his goal was non-partisan. However, the results speak to a different conclusion.
He knew he would score some political points. He took a wedge issue, and essentially presented an ultimatum to Blogging Dippers: dump McLelland or else lose your credibility by supporting an anti-semite. He didn't use those words, but that was the subtext.
It's a classic divide-and-conquer manoeuvre. As a savvy Liberal, he took the calculated risk that it was going to work:
I just figured it was a win-win situation because no matter what else happened, McClelland and his hatred would be exposed for all to see and discredited.
Well, if he thought "no matter what else happened"-- that being the "worst case scenario"-- he must have had an optimal scenario in mind. Even if it failed, he certainly would have been at an advantage, humiliating McLelland and building his credibility. He gambled the divide-and-conquer strategem would work, and it did.
His appeal to his own sincerity just doesn't work for me. Anyone with the slightest politcal savvy could understand that dividing the Blogging Dippers would be beneficial to the Liberals. It diminishes the credibility of the socialists and it keeps them busy with infighting and re-organization, thereby prolonging the saga.
I probably have not helped the Liberal Party. As some people have commented, I have actually helped the NDP because Mr. McClelland was pulling the whole Blogging Dipper world down.
Not helped the Liberal Party? Exposing an Anti-semite doesn't help the Liberal Party? Well, it certainly helped Jason Cherniak, didn't it? And that's gotta help the party. Helped the NDP? Gimme a break. He expects us to believe that he's all in it for his selfless devotion. Like the infighting in the Blogging Dippers is a good thing for them.
Now that his divide-and-conquer manoeuvre worked, he can, once again, use this situation to his advantage:
I am proud because I believe that I helped stop an infection within the Canadian blog world.
This line reeks of messianic pretension. "Look at me, I'm the saviour of the Canadian blogosphere".
Like we needed saving.
Far from being "partisan", I have some regret that I did not pass this onto a Liberal MP. It would have been a far better public relations exercise.
Translation: Gee, if I hadn't been so selfless, a Liberal MP could have done you all a favour and done a way better job than I did (which was already pretty good to begin with).
The outcome of this affair was beyond his expectations, and he uses this positive outcome to make himself seem like a good guy-- which, in a way he is, because he did legitamitely expose anti-semitic comments-- but what a coincidence-- he also takes advantage of the situation to point what a good guy he's been and how he's been so selfless and non-partisan, so that the rest of the world should look up to him, possibly as a future Liberal Party bigwig.
I am disturbed by this lack of purity of heart-- to a use a Catholic phrase. There's nothing wrong with exposing anti-semitic comments, but I feel like Cherniak is trying to manipulate the situation in a partisan exercise, notwithstanding his protests to the contrary.
It makes me think of the episode of the adulterous woman. The Pharisees caught a woman committing open adultery. She was guilty as sin. The Pharisees dared Jesus to cast the first stone in what was an open-and-shut case.
The event was not about adultery. It was not about Jesus' adherence to the Law. It was a political manoeuvre to create some bad PR around him. But of course the Pharisees would have said that they were simply doing the right thing.
To diffuse the situation, Jesus said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone".
Jesus didn't say she wasn't guilty. Jesus didn't say that the Law on stoning adulterers was wrong. His message was: if you want to engage in this PR exercise, you can do that, but don't be surprised if you're the next victim.
Just a thought.
I wouldn't be surprised if I get called anti-semitic for implying Cherniak is a Pharisee. For devout Jews (not that he is one) criticizing Pharisees is objectionable. But my point is not to critique the Pharisaic Party. It is simply to illustrate a point.
UPDATE:
Rempelia Prime (along with Joanne in the comments) and Kathy Shaidle seem to agree with me.
UPDATE #2: Thanks to Giant Political Mouse for the link. I just wish to clarify that I am not a Blogging Tory. I think many people count me as an honorary Blogging Tory though.
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